The Secret Keeper Cave

More than a dozen or so years after Ruthie and I had first found what became our secret cave, we looked for it again.  The sun was high and the ocean sparkled like diamonds with the whitecaps stirred up by the wind.  We walked the narrow path around Cow Ledge, single file and laughing at the shared memories – Old Hat and her trusty shotgun, Sparrow and his old hound dog, Miss Clara’s little cabin, all gone to dust now – all the way to Driftwood Cove and then uphill to Lighthouse Point and finally downward and past the abandoned graveyard to the grown over dirt path that led to Crittendon’s Creek.

Didn’t seem so long when we were kids, I said settling onto a fallen log and sliding my bare feet into the warm sand.

Ain’t that the truth,  Ruthie agreed, pulling out a pack of Exports and lighting up.  It took several tries on account of the wind and she cussed once or twice until I pulled out my Ronson wind-proof.  She lit two and handed one to me, just as we used to do so many years ago.

Old habits, she said with a grin.

You buy them or steal them?  I asked and laughed, keeping the old game going.

We sat in comfortable silence for awhile, listening to the seals barking in the distance and the tide coming in and then decided to have lunch before going on.   Miz McIntyre, widowed these days but still manning the counter at the general store four days a week, had packed us box lunches and made us promise not to peek.  We discovered grapes and hardboiled eggs, chicken salad and strips of dried fish, and best of all, a half dozen slices of thick white bread, generously spread with butter and coated with sugar.  Tucked into a corner of each cardboard box was a small, cellophane bag of dulse – an acquired taste if ever there was one – but something we’d both learned to love as children. 

Do you remember…….. we both began at the same time and then laughed ourselves silly.

We each smoked a lazy second cigarette and then headed toward the sound of the creek, each hoping for something familiar that would lead us to our childhood hideaway.  Time and weather and isolation had altered the landscape considerably and I think we were both surprised when we reached the head of the creek and knew at once we were there.  The entrance was wildly overgrown, thick with weeds and branches all woven solidly together with a thicket of vines.  I had a pocket knife but Ruthie’d had more foresight and had packed a small axe.   We set about sawing and hacking our way through and eventually cleared just enough of a space to crawl through.

It was cool, shadowy, a little damp.  I thought if we spoke loudly enough, there would be echoes but neither of us was that brave so we talked in whispers.

Unlike so many things that you leave behind in childhood, it was almost exactly as we remembered, maybe a little smaller.  You could see for miles – that had made it an excellent lookout – and with just one or two backward steps, you were in complete darkness – which made it an excellent hiding place.  It was here we’d played pirates and had sword fights with sticks tied together with twine, dreamed of stowing away on the freight ships as they left harbor, practiced magic tricks and listened to rockabilly music.  It was here that Ruthie had come after one memorable Saturday night encounter with her drunken father – she’d stayed overnight all alone - and I was astonished at her courage.  It was here we’d hidden from the bootleggers, scratched our initials into the walls, rehearsed steps for when we were old enough to go to the dance.  It was here that we’d made our voodoo dolls from sand filled socks, painting on their faces with red nail polish and piercing them thoroughly with hatpins discreetly stolen from Nana’s jewelry box.  It was here that once each summer we left the secrets that were too private to share - even with your best friend – one confessing while the other stood guard and then switching places.

We didn’t stay long but, silly as it sounds, we did take the time to perform the old ritual one last time and it didn’t feel silly, it felt solemn.  Just when you think you’ve put the past behind you, I remember thinking, you trip on it.

We re-covered the entrance, stacking branches and clumps of grass over it – to keep it private, I suppose – then we walked home the way we’d come, single file and slowly.  By the time we reached The Point, the sun was setting, the wind had died down, and it was pretty much deserted except for Ruthie’s little red sports car parked at the end of the breakwater.

 

My only real extravagance, she assured me, Bought it with Daddy’s life insurance money and if that ain’t justice, I don’t know what is.

She drove like the wind.

 And the rest?  Echoes.  Nothing but faint, harmless echoes.